Cannabis is a genus of the flowering plant Cannabis which has long been used for drug and industrial purposes, fiber (hemp), for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a recreational drug. Industrial hemp products are made from Cannabis plants selected to produce an abundance of fiber. The Cannabis plant is an annual, dioecious, flowering herb indigenous to central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Cannabis plant material has been reported to contain suitable and desirable compounds, useful in various pharmaceutical dosage forms and methods of medical treatment. Cannabinoids, terpenoids, and flavonoids are included amongst the various suitable and desirable compounds.
The medicinal and psychoactive properties of the Cannabis plant have been documented for centuries. Growing evidence suggests that Cannabis is a safe, versatile and potentially inexpensive drug. It has been reported as being beneficial to patients suffering from a wide range of symptoms experienced in connection with various, often very serious, medical conditions. For example, Cannabis has been reported as being useful to alleviate symptoms associated with cancer, anorexia, chronic pain, spasticity, arthritis, migraine and many other illnesses. As a result, recent research into the use of cannabis-derived products for the treatment of a variety of diseases and conditions is reaching a feverish pace. In the United States, Cannabis has become an important, emerging medical option in a number of states. It is quickly becoming clear that drug formulations containing specific cannabis-derived chemical compounds can have dramatic affect in improving the lives of many patients. This extends well past the treatment of nausea, glaucoma, or pain relief which has been traditionally treated with cannabis as a “shotgun” approach. It has become clear that the use of targeted cannabis-derived chemical compounds for a specific ailment is much more effective.
The physiological and pharmacological effects of cannabis-derived products depend upon a number of factors, including the dosage level and the route of administration. In Cannabis, the content and composition of terpenes are strongly inherited and therefore have been widely used as biochemical markers in chemo-systematic studies to characterize plant species, provenances, clones and hybrids thereof. Cannabis plants can exhibit wide variation in the quantity and type of chemical compounds that they produce. In fact, a wide variability in terpenes, terpenoids, and/or cannabinoids content in different strains of Cannabis has been reported. In addition, as is also the case for many other plant species, Cannabis plants often exhibit dynamic biochemical changes when attacked by diseases and herbivores and in response to abiotic stresses, resulting in the induced production and release of aroma volatiles that are beneficial for direct or indirect defense. As a result, plant materials harvested from cannabis plants and products derived therefrom typically exhibit great variations in their chemical composition and quality.
Therefore, there is growing need for compositions, systems, and methods for the preparation of drug product formulations, for both medicinal and recreational use, in large quantity and with more consistent quality.